


The Real Children

by americanjedi



Series: Wee Doctor [8]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Davey has a stab, Gen, Hobnobs, John has an upset, Mycroft has a moment, Sherlock has some hobnobs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-02
Updated: 2017-11-02
Packaged: 2019-01-28 13:35:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12607776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/americanjedi/pseuds/americanjedi
Summary: Mycroft gets an emergency phone call from John and cause leads to affect and affect leads to knowledge.





	The Real Children

**Author's Note:**

> Unbetaed. Posted at the request of zalein and anon on tumblr. Shout out to them.

Mycroft’s mobile rung at two-thirty in the morning, just as he closed his laptop. He looked down at it, sitting its precise distance from the edge of his laptop, just before his work mobile. It didn’t alarm him to receive a call so early in the morning, he often received calls at all hours. The empty space above the answer icon did alarm him however, he only saw that non-number in relation to a single person.

“Dr. Watson?” Tucking the phone between shoulder and ear, he picked up his work mobile to text the necessary parties.

“I need immediate medical assistance.” The tight authoritative command in his voice only served to alarm Mycroft further. Muffled by the press between John’s shoulder and chin, he could still hear ragged, rapid action in the background. The puff of breathing of someone man handing someone else. A rip, a tear, a jagged chasm of a gasp, the wrong tone for John’s voice. “Cooper Heights flats. We’re on the roof.”

He’d never ask for himself. Mycroft changed the R3 – general emergency: medical to R5 – medical emergency requiring immediate response. “Of course. I’m arranging it now.”

On the other side of the mobile someone’s voice rumbled.

“They need to make it in ten.”

Surgery would be necessary then. He tried to list injuries that had a time limit to them, tried to sort himself mentally, but found himself floating in a quagmire of probability. “Medical is on the way, they’ll be there in time. The helicopter should land in short order.”

John’s breath was measured like a metronome. It should have calmed Mycroft, smooth and even as it was; this was the sort of circumstance John had been trained for. “Thank you,” he said. Then: “Davey stop. Davey hold still-” The distress in his voice quaked underneath the command as subtle and as shattering as the shift in tectonic plates. Alarm shuddered its way through Mycroft’s joints. David Watson was too often violet, vulgar when expressing his disapproval, a man who battered his way through life with all of the outward appearance of a man of pure id. Then, of course, with typical Watson perversity of spirit, turned hyperaware of himself, turned gentle, became tender.

The question pricked at Mycroft, whether or not John was alright, even as it was incredibly clear this was the last time in the world he should ask. There came a sort of popping, twap as the phone dropped, bouncing on the roof, and the sound of the brothers’ voices.

“Don’t let them take you away.”

“They won’t take me away, Davey. David, lie still.”

“You hated it there. You wanted him to- You- You grew up,” David said.

“Don’t we all.”

David laughed, a sudden burst of delight, and then swallowed down a shriek.

“Lie still, or so help me,” Dr. Watson snarled, savage. “So help me. So help me. So help me.”

“You said that,” David told him, voice wet. “I’m not scared of dying, baby.”

“Where’s the phone?” John snarled at him, growling like a wood chipper. “Where’s the phone?”

“Aren’t you supposed to say you’re not a baby? Ha, ha, baby brother’s all grown up.”

“You’re not funny,” he told him.

“Oh, you big softie. They’re going to find out. You shouldn’t waste time. You need to cremate me, so they don’t find out. Like with-” His swallow clunked in his throat. The phone must have fallen very close to his face. The last time Mycroft had seen the man it had been at the annual Christmas party at one of David’s flats. John had been apart, worrying his bottom lip when his brother had approached him, an arm around his shoulder. He’d jostled him, bussed and bullied him against his side, head ducked close until John had been shaken right out of his stiffness. His shoulders losing that iron bar that reinforced them against any overt affection. The two of them had talked, side by side out on the balcony, crammed onto a padded bench, their heads close together. When John had scrubbed his palms against his legs to warm them, Davey had pulled out his lighter, holding it out without comment or pause in the conversation while his little brother warmed his hands.

In such a small thing Mycroft had understood how David had loved and hated Sherlock. How clearly the man considered the Holmes brothers as interlopers, as a mark of failure. Almost as doppelgangers come to replace himself and Roost in John’s life. Perhaps even worse, undeserving of the easy grace of John’s fondness. How much he wanted his baby brother to be close.

“So what?” John answered. “So what? Who cares if they know?”

“It’ll change things. We won’t be as safe, we need- Oh,” said David, voice very close now. “There’s the phone.”

After the scramble and return of John’s metronomic breath Mycroft had asked.

“I’m fine,” John replied, absent, automatic. Not even a purely physical assessment. Irritating. “Mycroft… Davey stop that. Sorry about that earlier. Someone’s being difficult.”

“I assume Sherlock knows you’re with your brother,” he asked, already knowing the answer, already texting Sherlock. A guilty John was less wily and far more tractable. It was important not to forget how dangerous John was.

“Men in their twenties don’t need to check in every minute of the day.” Beneath his perfectly true protest ran that predictable concern for Sherlock’s peace of mind. “Please don’t call Sherlock. He’s been awake for three days, I just got him to sleep.” As if he were the parent. The wisdom in Sherlock as a guardian once again made Mycroft grimace in admiration. What might be the best of parents in other circumstance would become inattentive without meaning to in the face of John’s incredible obedience, his manners, his self-sufficiency. Sherlock though… Sherlock was loud, and pushy. He demanded and rearranged. John tried to put his personal needs last and Sherlock got offended and bullied the boy into eating a cake. “I see the helicopter now. Don’t think I don’t know you’ve been texting Sherlock.”

“Why whatever to you mean?”

Whatever John’s answer may have been it was swallowed up in the rush of the landing helicopter. He could just hear John shout over the sound of the blades. “No, no, I’m fine! Leave it, it’s superficial. This is the patient. Mycroft! I have to go!”

“Of course, Dr. Watson. We’ll talk later.”

He rung off with his usual practicality. Mycroft liked that about him. He called Sherlock as he went over to his closet to select a different suit. It was hard to tell if Sherlock was still asleep or just ignoring the texts. The first call to Sherlock went through to the answerphone. It took until the third call until he was dismissed on the second ring, he must have really been asleep then. His temper would be short enough to answer his phone. He hit redial as he buttoned his waistcoat, the text ringing from his work phone notifying him Simmons and the car had arrived.

“I don’t care,” Sherlock rumbled at him.

“I doubt that,” Mycroft told him. Curiosity always was his weakness.

“Why are you on speaker? You’re changing clothes. National emergency or- John. What happened to John?”

His work phone chimed again, Mycroft read over the notes on the Watsons.

“Excellent, you’re awake then. I’m sending a car to pick you up, put on some actual clothes, there’ll be a wait.”

“What happened to John?”

“Davey’s been hurt. John was on scene. He’ll be in surgery. Wait- No, not John. He won’t trust himself to operate on his own brother.”

There were dramatic sounds in the background. “Is he alright?”

“Physically. Mostly. He said he was fine. I have every reason to believe David is dying.”

“Fine? If he said he’s fine he could have been shot. He could be missing a leg. Roost?” Sherlock asked.

“I don’t know. He should still be at school.” Mycroft descended the stairs two at a time, leaving his housekeeper – alert but for the pillow creases in her cheek – to lock up after him.

“We’ll let John contact him then. You’re even more rubbish at sentiment than I am. Where’s your car?”

“Are you dressed?” Simmons pulled away from the kerb with the liquid elegance of someone who truly loved cars. They should arrive in short order.

“What do you think I’ve been doing? Where’s your car? Never mind, I’ll take a taxi, where did you send them? Which hospital?”

“The Watsons are being sent to a discreet government hospital.”

“No.”

“It’s not a matter of choice, they’re already in route,” Mycroft told him, watching the convenient changing of the traffic lights in front of them. “John will have to watch David die if I redirect the helicopter.”

“Absolutely not, Mycroft! They aren’t lab rats. No facilities!” Sherlock spat out the word like it was a particularly vile layer of hell.

“They won’t be put in jumpsuits and made to fight to the death. It’s a hospital.”

“How soon after you heard Davey was hurt did you prepare for the autopsy? Will you even bother with the pretense of the surgical theater?”

Mycroft swallowed, felt something clench in his belly. “You have a very low opinion of me.”

“I- I’m sorry. I’m just- That was inexcusable.”

“I won’t say any more about it, but I don’t want to hear anything like that ever again.” He could see Sherlock’s Byronic angst billowing up as they pulled up at 221B. Sherlock all but dove through the car window as soon as they came to a stop, shouting at Simmons to hurry up. Apparently Sherlock’s version of getting dressed was throwing on a robe. He was also clutching a packet of hobnobs in one hand and his hair in the other, that white streak he was typically so vain about sticking up at an odd angle.

“Sherlock.”

“Shut up. They’re for John. He’ll be hungry afterward.” He took a low breath. “John doesn’t like to lose a patient, he’s going to take this terribly.”

“He won’t be performing the surgery,” Mycroft reminded him, turning back to his phone and not knowing what to do with it. Doesn’t like to lose a patient indeed. He pictured the view at the Christmas party, the pale curl of David’s face turned toward his baby brother, the wounded thing that slunk behind his eyes healed a little. Thought of John’s hands held close to the flame. David had wanted something. That’s what the wound had been, sentiment – the knife that only cut deeper with time. He’d wanted to play house, wanted to have a little brother who came to him when he wanted advice. Wanted inside jokes and teasing nicknames. Melancholy hit Mycroft like a pipe to the belly. He could feel himself split open inside as if he had been constructed of paper mache and the loneliness had bared the hollowness he had tucked away beneath occupation and bespoke.

Sherlock was staring at him.

“What is it?”

“You’ve gone quiet.”

Mycroft raised an eyebrow. “I wasn’t aware I was required to entertain you.”

“You’re really worried about him.”

“The boy’s already lost his childhood, and his father. He’s steady enough he won’t fall completely to pieces. Still, it won’t be pleasant for him to lose his brother.”

Simmons knew him well enough not to tell him they’d arrived as they pulled into the underground car park. Redundancy. There was enough of it in the world without his staff indulging as well. He bore up under Sherlock vibrating his way up the lift and into the small waiting room of the ‘ad firm,’ the hospital level sanitation - the white tile and smooth plastic walls - explained away with a sleek, chic décor.

“John Watson,” Sherlock said, assaulting the typing receptionist.

“He’s in the back, he’s been a bit stubborn, but Dr. Wilder convinced him to let her treat him. He’s alright, just a little beat up.”

“Sherlock,” Mycroft told him. “We should sit and wait.”

His brother clung to the hobnobs, eyes wide.

“If you go back now, you’ll only distress him further. You know it’s true. He’ll want to look brave in front of you. Come sit down.”

Mycroft – trying to lead by example, eased himself down into a chair and began to do some paperwork. After a bit of pacing, a bit of wheedling, Sherlock gave up and sat down as well – falling asleep almost immediately, hobnobs still grasped in one hand. It wasn’t half an hour later when John emerged, head turned downward, stitches dark across his forehead and his steps stiff, the wrap on his right forearm peeking out from the sleeve of his hospital issue jumper. Without wanting to Mycroft saw what happened, put together the geometry of the small cuts from a blast, saw John turn his face to side, saw him raise an arm, fall backward. There were a few other possibilities after that, he saw David in the iron grip of sentiment stayed between his brother and the blade. Old age was making Mycroft soft, deeply sentimental in some places and worryingly shallow in others.

“Sherlock?” John startled, halting. Sherlock stirred awake, becoming laser sharp in a moment, then softening in an instant. Mycroft wondered if he’d be even half as warm a father. The boy turned to look at him with a creased brow. When had twenty one become so very young? “Mycroft, I told you not to wake him.”

Mycroft gave him a look which communicated how ridiculous that order had been in the first place.

“I could have called him in the morning,” he turned to look up at Sherlock. “I would have called you when we were done.”

“You can still call me if it’ll make you feel better, and then I can tell you over the phone not to ever tell someone to let me sleep when you’re in crisis. Mycroft was good enough to stick his nose in on one of the few occasions it was actually helpful. And arranged a place for your terrible brother at his secret government hospital.”

“It’s not my secret government hospital.”

“Mycroft,” John fidgeted in place, bottom lip. “Thank you. I appreciate your sympathy. You don’t need to worry though, Davey’s going to be alright.”

He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say to that. Even now he was still getting used to John’s particular form of empathy. “Of course.”

“At least Davey comes by his meddling naturally,” he tried with the air of a joke, if a weak one. The Holmes blinked at him.

The young man looked between the two Holmes brothers expectantly. They looked expectantly back.

“Oh,” John’s brow furrowed then lifted in horror. The word stayed there on the tile between them, its ripples chasing out after it. It wasn’t like John to let things slip. He was a variable little vault, face screwed up as puggish as his uncle and unimpressed with threats and bribery alike. Looking at him, Mycroft could see how lost he looked, the width of his eyes, the way his body hung off his spine. He looked away, trying to straighten into parade rest, then wincing as it pulled his wounds. He crumbled forward again, right hand clenching for the black and white familiarity of a gun. “I thought you would have- I mean, when I was in hospital you… We’ve already been here a few hours. I just thought you knew, you know everything.”

Sherlock made an offended sound.

“I’ll.” He pushed his brows together. “I want to go check on Davey.” He all but fled, Sherlock’s brow furrowed at his fleeing form. Something in Mycroft’s brain woke and began rumbling forward. Perhaps he should go talk to the technician he had running David’s blood sample.

“Sherlock?”

“I’ll stay here.” He pressed his lips together. “I’m not so oblivious that I can’t figure out John needs time alone. He hates it when anyone is too obvious about babying him.”

Mycroft thought he would go and talk to the technician. The idea had come to him, Athena-esque as they sometimes were, only a few unknowns obscuring the details. This was not how things were supposed to go, this was not how the story was supposed to unfold. John shouldn’t have made such a slip of the tongue, Mycroft should have guessed before. Watsons regularly tilted the world, regularly picked at edges of assumptions, but they were a separate wonder. They were the small, secret consequences of the arrogance of intellectual colonialism and the no holds barred scientific inquiry in the wake of the cold war. An effect of something manageable and dying off, but real – its fingerprints still pressed on the world in little ways. They weren’t, however, supposed to exist in relation to the real world. To real people. 

It occurred to Mycroft that he’d been thinking of himself and his brother as real and the Watsons as not. Something less human. A puzzle to pick at and a story to amuse himself with in dull hours. One’s emotional attachment was not necessarily relatable to the reality of it. Just look at the way the British Public tended to skip over certain news reports. John’s reticence and David’s passive contempt made more sense now. John could spot a man’s intentions at fifty paces, to be thought of in such a way much have been… disconcerting. 

Nearly as disconcerting as it felt to look at the report in a small lab at the back of the facility, looking at the smear of David’s DNA, the blood samples and bits of hair sitting by. The technician was the sort of scientist that would always find work. She asked no questions and made no mistakes, she went about her work like a mechanic or a particularly skilled factory employee. As soon as her work was done she would forget it, would forget him and anyone else like him. That was why she worked there in the first place.

Ten years ago it could have taken days, hours even, to get the results. Now he could watch in real time as David Watson was identified as his sibling. Something a little closer. The same mother, the test showed, same father, so very Holmes, so very close to him, and then deviation began, twisting his genetics away from Mycroft’s. They are almost close, almost identical, almost the same. They seem as though they had laid their hand prints one on top of the other, the blurs where they don’t quite overlap only emphasizing the fact that they did. That genetically, they stood in each other’s footprints.

The Watsons were meant to be separate. They weren’t meant to be… 

Someone had taken from Mycroft. Someone had come and taken something from him. The technician stilled next to him, her dropper raised. The other subject – the boy. From so long ago, a decade, longer. The one who’d carved equations into his skin- They’d tested him then, all those years ago, they tested him and his odd genetics, so closely related to some brilliant mathematician from a family of brilliant mathematicians. Like Mycroft’s family had been brilliant, like he had been brilliant. Sherlock, who was a lovable idiot compared to him was certifiably a genius.

His mind spring open, memories sorted and filed plastering the landscape of his mind. Letters from concerned teachers, worried headmasters, the assessments he’d taken. How old was David? How old had Mycroft been when they harvested from him? How had they even done it? Seven years between generations. The math flowed quick and liquid as a drop of water. Twenty one, twenty eight, thirty five. Mycroft had been twenty then, already working for the government, when he’d been selected. What had made Dr. Grendel look at him? What had he done at twenty to let Grendel know something like David Watson could be made from him?

Even worse, Mycroft had not been prepared for the sense of deep theft he had felt. How betrayed. That someone had taken something from him, who had made a masterwork of controlling his emotions had been used without his knowledge or consent to create a raw nerve of a man resting beneath a thin layer of brutality and fine china. Anyone could know the very heart of Davey if enough time was invested. Anyone could see to the very heart of him, teeth bared and bloody knuckled, stripped down to a snarling reptile brain with all its need and all its vulnerability. Then there was the brilliance of him, the sense of self-awareness, the ability to self-improve. Underneath all that he really was an unpleasant, disagreeable person, but one capable of a great deal of affection.

What could David must have been thinking this whole time? How he must have hated Mycroft and Sherlock – whole, together. Too prickly to be too close, but too fond each other not to pick at each other. They could work together, function together, in a way that the Watsons were still practicing at – years ahead of the curve. John was the piece that was important, John was the buffer that made Rooster and David safe to be around each other. How could David stand them knowing that they taken John away and had an ease of relationship that he was still figuring out with his brother. 

The Holmes were whole, had parents, had a life – a charmed one in comparison to the one David had faced. They hadn’t fled some military nightmare of a social engineered childhood. Hadn’t seen anyone die until they were adults. Hadn’t been mistreated by those entrusted with their love and care. Hadn’t had to flee to a strange land with a culture that made no sense in the middle of a ruthless criminal London. Even Mycroft with his intellect would not have been prepared to kill a man at the age David had begun his criminal empire. Even now he was uncertain what his own reaction would be if faced with such a disparity between the lives of himself and the man from which he was formed.

Without meaning to in any meaningful way, without thinking of what he would find, he made his way to David’s room. Past the façade of the front desk, the ad firm front plate in case anyone wandered in past security, were the operating theater and the patient rooms. He entered the room with a care he hadn’t exercised in years. Useless facts poured in and then out, the sort of wave of data that he always had to wade through. The surgeon would be divorced in the next five years, the nurse suspected she might be allergic to pineapple, the nurse’s husband was afraid of flying. The easy bits of information people smeared across a room. David, Bad Davey, lay in the middle of it; blood, bone china, oil spills of growing bruises, and inarguable presence. Unconsciousness should have rendered him small, frail. The tubes and wires, the blood flowing into his blood and the gauze wrapped around his body should have brought the discomfort of peering round the proverbial corner at death.

Instead David managed to look perturbed at the whole of it. Disagreeable even as machines hissed warning at him.

The door closed behind Mycroft with an unexpected snap, jolting David’s eyes open – black and wide from the opiates. The sharpness that usually lingered there looked smothered under whatever they’d given him. The microexpressions in his face, little tensions that thinned his mouth and tightened his brow were the only sharp things about him. Whatever Grendel had done with him, whatever had been mixed in made it harder for the man to stay down. After a moment of looking at Mycroft with a tick of confusion between his eyebrows his gaze fell to his brother.

“Hey there, baby bruv,” Davey breathed out, puffs of words, collapsing under their own weight.

John trembled in place, anxiety tightening the tucked line of his mouth.

“Sh, sh, none of that.” He tried to rally before he went so pale it frightened something low and animal in Mycroft. Groaning low, lowing, he closed his eyes, sweat on his brow popping up.

“Davey,” John whined. The sound made the hairs on the back of Mycroft’s neck stand up. He didn’t belong here. Davey was dying, or not dying. Had almost died. “I told them you needed more.”

No more words came, but he twitched his fingers, beckoning. Eyes moving in unfocused sweeps, he caught sight of Mycroft, then decided not to deal with him with a clunky set of his jaw.

“You’re supposed to still be asleep, the anesthesia isn’t supposed to wear off so quick,” John clarified.

That only got him an idea of a swaddled shrug. 

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

Davey only tched at that. Shifted an arm away from his body to make a space. Fought hard for the space so his mortality, the narrowness of the mortal coil, shone through his pain wracked face. The sweat the movement pulled up on his forehead shone in the hospital lighting, ran down his face to collect in his hair. The bruise on the side of his head looked malignant, his cheek bone broken, perhaps his skull cracked, but then Mycroft wasn’t sure what upgrades the brothers Watson might enjoy. Soon the swelling would leave Davey monocular. Only time would tell what will become of the eye. The tubing emerging from the blankets implied damage to the lower digestive tract. The thick bandaging showed each move with a clarity that for once he wished he couldn’t see for more sentimental reasons. Some sort of small knife had gone into his shoulder, a bash to the side of his head, then the swing of the blade sliding in under his vest.

Closing his eyes again, David hissed. Weak, defiant. “They tried to burn me out. He tried to burn me out.”

Their bodies lay in arrangement – not touching, but fitting together with puzzle piece ease.

“Couldn’t do it, could he?”

“No,” John croaked. His lashes sparkled a bit.

“Death can’t do it either. Not to me. Why not?”

“Cause you’re Bad Davey,” John repeated with the automation of the catechism.

“Hey,” Davey barked at Mycroft. “Useless. Meddle with my morphine. I need a bigger dose than most.”

“Davey-” John started.

“What are you going to say, baby?”

John swallowed, mortified to be seen like this, it was carved into every millimeter of his spine. Still, he seemed unable to release Davey’s hospital gown. Mycroft fell back into the visitor chair, staggering so the rubber shoed legs juddered back with complaint.

Something flickered across Davey’s face, a bone deep horror. “You know then.”

Seeing that young man, pale and almost dying in his hospital bed, something like horror curled up in Mycroft as well. “I suspected. John let it slip.”

“I didn’t-”

“Hush, baby bruv,” Davey soothed. “None of that. You just rest.”

“I’m not sleepy.”

“I know.” Mycroft could see how much he wanted to cosset their foreheads together. “But getting near hacked to bits takes a lot out of a bloke.”

Stilling, John closed his eyes, played asleep.

“You suspected, that’s as good as knowing. Nearly. You had one of your staff swipe a blood sample. Morals too high to be too invasive, but I had enough blood coming out of me I wouldn’t miss a little more.” David wouldn’t look at him.

“Does Sherlock know?”

“What do you think?” he gave him an almost disappointed look from his hospital bed. 

“I’ll let him figure it out on his own then. He’d never forgive me if I told him.”

“Brothers, yeah?” The man on the bed had a peculiar expression under the bloodspill of his hair. Beneath the pain he had the expression of someone who had swallowed a stone.

“How could you think I would hate you?” Mycroft asked, making use of what John loved to call a Holmesian leap of logic.

“Don’t you know what naming something does?” David asked.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Don’t you know what David means?”

“Oh.” Mycroft leaned back in his chair, felt the ergonomic back lean back with him.

“Yeah, oh. I know the trick of of, know how to do it like the real people do. Old man W had some issues, but he sure knew how to work the power of positive thinking. He felt things so strong, all this anger, and grumpiness, and affection. He made it real just by feeling it. So I’m David, and this one’s called John. Now I got my precious little boy all grown up and safe, and the other one a deal less mad. My best girl’s happy and has a sweet man to take care of her. I got godkids to think I’m a god. What have I got to be brokenhearted about?”

“Why would that make me hate you?”

David raised an eyebrow and him and Mycroft conceded the point. “But you don’t have everything you want.”

“Eh,” David said, swinging his eyes toward the morphine drip to give a hint. Mycroft stood to comply. “This is real life, friend. Anybody who gets everything they want isn’t worth knowing.”

“You used to hate Sherlock. So what,” Mycroft said at the controls. “Because W loved you you’re fine with… everything?”

“Eh, fine’s for people in denial. I’m alright though. Your brother needed to have someone to prove he could be a good guardian to, he gets lazy without a point to make. He’d take perfect care of John just to prove his point. And look at the kid, turned out okay. Just like Sherlock’s going to be.” He muttered a few affectionate obscenities at Mycroft, eyes drifting close. “Just like you’re going to be.”

“You’re not dead yet,” Mycroft affirmed.

“Hey,” David breathed out, hand over John’s where it clutched at his hospital gown. “You know he cares about you too? Thinks you’re a prick, but he cares about you too. He has a soft spot for difficult people.”

He looked down to where John had collapsed into a restless sleep.

“Power of positive thinking?”

“That’s what they tell me,” David told him one eye open as he drifted away. “That’s what they say.”


End file.
